Testimony begins in murder case

Published: Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 08:45 PM.

Teddy told jurors they would have to make that decision based on the evidence presented in the courtroom and the testimony they heard from the witness stand.

"...You're going to have to answer the question of whether there was a break-in, you're going to have to answer whether there was a rape, you're going to have to answer whether there was a homicide," he said, facing the jurors. "As we are all sitting here right now, everybody has agreed there's been no break-in, no rape, no homicide."

Teddy said a "finger of suspicion" has been pointed at Donald Eugene Borders, beginning in 2009, and what happened after that finger was pointed at Borders will shock the jury.

He said jurors will hear about evidence that was contaminated by several people, including police officers.

"From the moment the investigation began, there were problems," Teddy said. "I contend that you're also going to find the DNA testing was contaminated and there were problems with the DNA testing in this case."

Louis Ledbetter said he could tell, from the bedroom doorway, the elderly woman was dead.

He said he felt for a pulse in her left wrist.

She was cold and clammy to the touch.

During Thursday's court testimony in the murder trial of Donald Eugene Borders, Ledbetter said he clearly remembers Margaret Tessneer's dentures lying beside her on the mattress, dried blood staining the false teeth.

He remembers a bruise on her wrist and the way the blood had pooled in her outstretched arm.

Ledbetter said he reached up and closed Tessneer's open eyes, out of respect, and asked for a sheet to place over her body.

He said he is retired now but spent 19 years responding to emergency calls as a Cleveland County paramedic. He testified in court that most of the details of that day have escaped his memory.

In a photo displayed for jurors to see, Tessneer's body is shown splayed on the bed, feet dangling off the side and arms flung out.

On Thursday, Ledbetter said looking at that photo brought back memories of Sept. 20, 2003, when he responded to the call at 1024 Railroad Ave.

Vic Haynes, who was working as a Shelby Police patrol officer in 2003, said he was dispatched to Tessneer's home after the 911 call came in and was the first to arrive.

He testified about finding the phone lines ripped away from the outside of the house and the two cement blocks stacked under her bedroom window.

Haynes said he cleared everyone from the house and had an officer posted in the front and back yards.

‘It was a traumatic experience’

On that Saturday morning, around 11 a.m., 79-year-old Margaret Tessneer was found by her daughter and son-in-law.

Libby Clark testified Thursday she went with her husband, Tommy Clark, to a doctor's appointment and then stopped at Hardees to pick up a biscuit for her mother.

When they arrived at Tessneer's home, Clark said, before she even got out of the car, she noticed two cement blocks lying on the north side of her mother's house.

She testified she thought that was unusual.

When she walked up the steps to the closed-in porch, the screen door was unlocked, Clark said.

She said she remembers knocking on the front door, waiting a brief moment, and then turning the knob.

It, too, was unlocked.

"Mama was very cautious," Clark said.

When she stepped inside the house, she said she looked down the hall and noticed the lamp on a dresser in her mother's bedroom that had been left on.

Clark said Tessneer never left lights burning in the daylight.

Then she saw her mother lying on the bed, unresponsive, and said she tried to use a phone in the bedroom to call 911. When it didn't work, Clark said she tried another phone in the house but it didn't work either.

She said she ran down the street to a neighbor's house and yelled through an open window to call 911.

"It was a traumatic experience," Clark said.

She said it was around a year before she was able to step foot in the house again.

Tessneer's two daughters, Libby Clark and Peggy Sparks, both testified in court Thursday that their mother was in good health.

Clark said Tessneer had been living on Railroad Avenue since 1958.

She said her mother suffered from osteoarthritis but it was the only medical condition she had, to her knowledge.

The sisters said their mother enjoyed getting out of the house and both women visited their mother frequently.

Sparks said she had lunch with Tessneer, as she usually did during the week, the day before her mother’s death.

She remembered it was warm out that day and her mother was in high spirits.

Sparks said the two had lunch and watched a soap opera.

It was the last time anyone saw her mother alive.

‘It won’t be a short trial’

Thursday afternoon, the trial began when both defense and prosecution presented opening statements to an attentive jury.

Donald Eugene Borders, head propped up by one hand, sat at the defense's table peering through his glasses at a yellow legal pad in front of him.

He jotted notes as Assistant District Attorney Sally Kirby-Turner faced the jurors and began talking about that Saturday in September 10 years ago.

Kirby-Turner explained how an investigation began the day Tessneer died, and how her body was sent to a doctor for an autopsy.

She said a rape kit was also performed.

She told jurors they would hear testimony from several people, including the State Bureau of Investigation agent who took the sperm found on Tessneer's body and created a DNA profile from that sperm.

Kirby-Turner said the case languished for several years.

In 2009, it was deemed a cold case.

A Shelby Police detective was assigned to the case and began working it with SBI Agent John Kaiser.

"They worked on it vigorously," Kirby-Turner said. "Eventually they came to the conclusion they needed to get a DNA sample from Mr. Borders."

She said a sample was collected from Borders' cigarette butt and sent to the SBI lab.

When compared, Kirby-Turner said, the sample from the cigarette matched the sample developed from Tessneer's body.

"It won't be a short trial, it will be a lengthy trial," she said to the jury. "But every piece of evidence the state will offer is very important in this case."

‘You’re going to have to answer the question’

David Teddy, Borders' attorney, solemnly told jurors that in the next several days they will have to make a decision.

"The decision that you're going to have to make is what happened on Railroad Avenue in September of 2003," he said.

Teddy told jurors they would have to make that decision based on the evidence presented in the courtroom and the testimony they heard from the witness stand.

"...You're going to have to answer the question of whether there was a break-in, you're going to have to answer whether there was a rape, you're going to have to answer whether there was a homicide," he said, facing the jurors. "As we are all sitting here right now, everybody has agreed there's been no break-in, no rape, no homicide."

Teddy said a "finger of suspicion" has been pointed at Donald Eugene Borders, beginning in 2009, and what happened after that finger was pointed at Borders will shock the jury.

He said jurors will hear about evidence that was contaminated by several people, including police officers.

"From the moment the investigation began, there were problems," Teddy said. "I contend that you're also going to find the DNA testing was contaminated and there were problems with the DNA testing in this case."

Teddy instructed jurors to not be blinded by science.

"To this day the case has not been declared a homicide," he said.

Autopsy results came back with an undetermined cause of death.

Teddy said if jurors found that the evidence in the case had been contaminated, they must come back with a verdict of not guilty.